Patrick deWitt: The good, the bad and the neurotic

Patrick deWitt was rummaging through unwanted treasures at a yard sale a few years ago when he came across The Forty-Niners, a weathered, leather-bound volume in Time-Life’s Old West series, which is the kind of thing one only finds at yard sales. It was a history of the men, women and children who journeyed to California in the mid-19th century seeking fortune. While the writing was unremarkable, the images caught deWitt’s eye: daguerreotypes of old miners and grizzled prospectors, ships abandoned in San Francisco’s harbour by crewmen off to strike it rich, and other scenes of the gold rush. The book cost 25¢. He bought it.

At the time, deWitt was just starting work on his second novel. A few years earlier, he’d written the words “sensitive cowboy” in his notebook — an idea which eventually spawned a fictional conversation between two bickering outlaws, but nothing more. When it came time to start the new book, deWitt found the scene on his computer, and decided these cowboys still had more bickering to do. The discovery of The Forty-Niners came at precisely the right time — he’d now found a period in American history in which to set the novel. He “mutilated” the book, posting the pictures on a corkboard above his desk, and began to write. Over a number of months, these two cowboys came to life, first becoming siblings and ultimately The Sisters Brothers, the name of deWitt’s recently released novel.

The cowboy is one of the most reliable archetypes in American pop culture; the word conjures up both bandits like Billy the Kid or Jesse James and actors like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, novels such as Lonesome Dove or True Grit and films such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Sisters Brothers, however, turns the stereotypical cowboy on his hat.

The novel tells the story of Eli and Charlie Sisters, two cowboys of indiscriminate age, who also happen to be killers-for-hire. They are also troubled men: Charlie, a charming psychopath capable of ending a life as quickly as downing a shot of brandy, is a drunkard; Eli, who narrates this outstanding novel, is a cowboy unlike any other. “I am not any one thing,” he says at one point in the novel, and it’s true: He’s a lovelorn fool, a neurotic cowboy self-conscious about his weight, a killer unsure about killing, and, most of all, an endearing, if conflicted, man.

“I wanted to subvert the character of the Western hero, and neurosis is really underwritten in Westerns — it doesn’t really exist,” deWitt says on the phone from his home in Portland, Ore. (he’s bounced back and forth between Canada and the United States since being born on Vancouver Island 36 years ago). “Everyone knows exactly who they are, and they don’t really doubt themselves — unless they’re a coward.”

He subverts other aspects of the Western, a genre with a very specific iconography and set of traditions: the duel, the man in black, the lone gunman. For deWitt, breaking these traditions was part of the appeal.

“I enjoyed coming at something that was already sort of realized, and already fully formed, as a backdrop … and then to fill it in however [I] wanted to fill it in,” he says. “Approaching something that’s already been addressed so many times was sort of a challenge, but also comforting, in some ways.” That said, the novel features a duel, and a final showdown between hero and villain. “As much as I enjoyed writing about things that weren’t part of the tradition, I also liked addressing things that were a part of the tradition, and then trying to make them different in some way.”

The fact that a Western novel is creating such buzz shouldn’t come as a surprise; the genre has recently emerged, relatively unscathed, from a period of unpopularity. The 1990s were a low point — Unforgiven winning the Oscar for best picture in 1993 notwithstanding — with fare such as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. — let us never speak of it again — polluting televisions across North America. In fact, deWitt himself isn’t a devotee of the genre: “I haven’t read hardly any Westerns, to tell you the truth,” he laughs. “It’s not really my thing,” though he professes admiration for spaghetti Westerns and the films of Sam Peckinpah.

When he began writing The Sisters Brothers, deWitt asked some friends in the publishing industry if writing a Western was a wise decision: “The general consensus I got was it was tough, that it was maybe not the smartest thing to be doing.” Fortunately for deWitt, the landscape has changed. This cowboy renaissance likely began with the critically acclaimed Deadwood, which ran on HBO from 2004 until 2006, and has continued with films such True Grit and The Good, the Bad, the Weird — a gonzo Asian entry to the genre — and a renewed interest in the work of writers such as Cormac McCarthy. “I heard that Quentin Tarantino is doing a Western now,” deWitt says. “I don’t know why it’s happening, but I’m glad it’s happening.” The novel has already been optioned by John C. Reilly’s production company — he’d make a great Eli — though deWitt cannot reveal anything about a potential film. He can reveal his next book will probably not be another Western, and promises there will be no more horses in peril, like Eli’s unforgettable horse, Tub. “In my first book (2009’s Ablutions) there’s a horse that gets punched in the face. People are asking me what my problem is with horses. I don’t know.”

There’s a scene, three-quarters of the way through the book, where the brothers encounter a prospector who has lost touch with reality; he thinks the dirt he brews is actually coffee. Charlie blames the man’s insanity on solitude. I ask deWitt if writers, often spending years alone working on their books, are threatened by similar afflictions.

“Yeah, I think it’s terribly unhealthy to spend all that time by yourself,” he says, laughing. “Today it’s this beautiful sunny day for the first time basically in eight months, and I’m sitting in my office all day. It just doesn’t make sense.”

• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt is published by House of Anansi